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Coastal Seascape: California

Painting California Coastal Delight

For this seascape painting, I used a couple of different resources to help me with the design. Off the California coast, are many great spots to stop and set up to paint. But for this painting called “Calfornia Coastal Delight”, I used a couple of ideas from some photos I took.

There are coastal flowers called “pride of Madeira” that blanket the cliffs with the most vivid deep purple color I’ve ever seen. They are everywhere and I find them to be a great compliment to the foreground of this particular art piece.

First I used it to tone my canvas with a thin wash before blocking in my basic shapes. I then let much of it show through as I built up the next layers. This gave the very blue ocean colors, a warmer feel-that of the coastal areas of California.

This color literally catapulted me into the vision I have been striving to create from my mind for so long. I am so excited to go forward from here using this color on my future California themed paintings.

One of many painting techniques I’ve learned, is to apply a whats called a “mother color” to the surface you want to paint on first. This color can be anything but most artists choose warmer shades like burnt sienna or yellow ochre over cooler colors. This helps bring color unity and warmth to the composition.